


Secret by the unmourning water

by marylex



Category: Oz (HBO)
Genre: AU, Apocalypse, Character of Color, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:19:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marylex/pseuds/marylex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>So the angel swung his sickle on the earth, and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse's bridle.</em>
</p><p>Revelation and <em>apokalypsos</em>.</p><p>About five degrees of AU, set post-series. Written for the Oz Gift of the Magi Challenge, 2011. <strong>Caveat lector.</strong></p>
            </blockquote>





	Secret by the unmourning water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alex_axle](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=alex_axle).



Ray isn't stupid, although he knows everyone probably thinks he's hopelessly naïve – for whatever value of "everyone" is left, and they certainly think he's hopelessly naïve _now_ \- so before he does anything else, he makes sure every handgun the SORT team has - _had_ \- and all of the rifles that will fit are locked up tight in the gun lockers. He hides the keys in his office on the other side of the prison, in the back of the bottom drawer of his desk, under a ream of messy filing that seemed important at the time, and then he stands in the dim cafeteria as late-winter sunlight filters through the tiny window of his locked office door, shadows pooling at his feet from the black hole of the silent kitchen, and struggles to catch his breath. His lungs still ache deep like a bruise, like drowning,and he tamps down on the panic he's not quite able to smother even now, every time he feels the invisible weight pressing on his chest from the inside out, even though he's through it, even though he's one of the few who made it out the other side.  
   
Through it, but never over it, he thinks, and he clenches his fists in the pockets of his sweatshirt, drawing the soft material tighter around himself in the numbing chill that's already settled into the now-unused sections of the cavernous prison. He shivers, tells himself it's the cold, but that's not it – not entirely – and he's glad to leave his office behind, no matter what he's walking toward.  
   
He traces fingers along the wall as he makes his way through the prison, blind man in a maze, grimacing at the condensation he hits in spots, flicking on his lighter – pinpoint flame – in the deepest darkness at the mouth of Em City - silent now, but not echoing, swallowing any sound, and he remembers the slick feel of blood and sacred oil on his hands as Tim McManus coughed out his life in a red spume, like drowning from the inside out. There was no way to take standard precautions – no way to take any precautions, at that point. There wasn't enough medical gear in the world for that level of protection.  
   
_So the angel swung his sickle on the earth,_ Ray thinks, _... and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse's bridle._  
   
Fucking _John_ , he thinks, revelation and _apokalypsos_ , and he pauses in the dark to rub a hand over his mouth, physically stifling a hysterical laugh. He presses his fingers into his eye sockets, over tender lids, like he can press out the lingering headache behind them, before rubbing his fingers down his thighs, trying to banish the phantom slide of thick dark blood against rough denim raided from the staff locker room - he's not sure whose, someone a little wider in the hip and longer in the thigh than Ray, himself. He'd expected a spare set of the prison greys, but this is what Sean brought when Ray asked for a change of clothes, swaddled in a scratchy prison blanket, chest heavy and throat still raw, light-headed from dehydration and blinking in white wintry light, and his collar was already gone, and he'd pulled on the thermal henley and flannel overshirt gratefully enough after rising from his cot to walk again.  
   
He remembers looking up to see Sean standing blank in the infirmary doorway as Ray leaned over a basin beside Tim's deathbed and tried to wash away the viscous stuff slicking his hands, remembers meeting the other man's eyes as the lights flickered when the power finally went out and the generators kicked on.  
   
Marvin Gaye filters tinny up the empty hallway from the admin section – "Mercy Mercy Me" – and it's probably Velasquez with his battery-operated tapedeck, and why not? Ray thinks as he walks into the still-lit command area at the heart of the prison, nexus of hallways and corridors with easy access to any unit, if they still wanted or needed it.  
   
Batteries aren't the problem. They have all the batteries in the world, at this point.  
   
Literally, maybe.  
   
Things ain't what they used to be, Ray thinks, and the music stirs faint memories of summer days and slow, warm sunshine, sounds of late-afternoon traffic in the city outside open windows as his mother danced him around the living room, golden light falling across her face and the brittle rice-paper verses hung on the wall above them, graceful soushotai brush strokes by a great-great-grandmother practicing her calligraphy in a New World, handed down over generations - but he can't think about that, either, as the lights flicker again above him.  
   
In his mind's eye, he focuses on the whiteboard in Leo's office – still Leo's office, always Leo's office to him, even now – and the look in Sean's eyes. Sean wrote the numbers up there during their last meeting - the five of them left on this side of the bars, now that D'Arbo disappeared when she went into the city hoping to scavenge some more medical supplies, and Armstrong walked away one night lit by flame on the horizon, and Harris vomited his life away in dirty water that hadn't been boiled properly – the five of them left, sitting around like some kind of committee, some kind of jury or star chamber with the power of life and death, and "13:30," Sean wrote in red ink, and Ray felt a chill run down his spine, tried to tell himself it was the cold.  
   
That was four hours ago, already, and even then it was only an estimate of how many hours Velasquez expected the gas-powered generators to last, now that any other power's dead, now that the phones have fallen silent and the water pressure's gone.  
   
Ray thinks they've probably been lucky so far, from what he heard before the last radio stations faded into staticky silence. The hydro power from the local plant kept them running on automatic a lot longer than anything coal-generated would have, and the cascading failure of the gas pipelines fucked over a lot of Middle America before things even got that bad here, for all that Oz, itself, was the epicenter, ground zero, Patient X multiplied exponentially.  
   
He wonders if Keller knew what he was doing, if Keller knew he was setting the world to burn in the wake of his own death.  
   
_On a pale horse,_ he thinks. _... and Hell rode with him._  
   
Critical population depletion, he thinks, and he can't get the scent out of the back of his throat, even this deep in the prison, the acrid charred meat and gasoline smell of the bonfire, smoke rising from the yard here at Oz, drifting up from the city, and ashes fluttering black and white and grey in the wind.  
   
Maybe something could have been salvaged, somewhere, if they'd all been turned away, if all the buses had been refused entry and turned back to Oz, like Fallsburg and Great Meadow had done when they showed up on their doorsteps, but Coxsackie already had let in a busload from Unit E hours earlier, carrying whatever secondary biohazard lay incubating in their lungs like a ticking timebomb from Keller's deadly package, and then it was loose, too late to stop it.  
   
Ray clamps down on all of that, focuses on his goal in Unit B, pausing at the entrance to the cellblock and trying to still his hammering heart, pulling in a series of gasping breaths against the weight of his chest, reaching for nonchalance or something like it. He closes his eyes momentarily and wishes he could murmur a Hail Mary, synecdoche of a noontime Angelus.  
   
The smell smacks him across the face as he rounds the corner into the unit – unwashed bodies and stagnant air, climate control almost gone with the scaling back of the ventilation system, and someone's toilet overflowed at the far end of the block before the plumbing finally went out. Robson and Ellsworth are yelling back and forth at each other across the litter-strewn corridor in exhausted, impotent rage, but most of who's left ... well, some of them have been left gaunt and rasping like Ray by the fire in the flesh that killed so many of their compatriots, and they're all too tired and hungry and shell-shocked to do much of anything, the survivors, those who've been left alive.  
   
The lucky ones? Ray thinks, and he's spent too much time in recent days, risen from his own pallet, ministering to the dying. The look he can see in the hollow eyes of the handsful left remind him of Diane Whittlesey, of Anthony Nowakowski, of blood and muzzle flare and the scratchy scent of teargas in the dark, of sticky tape over his mouth, cuts stinging and bruises aching, waiting for stray bullets to cut them all down as the SORT team advanced.  
   
He thinks about Torquemada, raising sloe eyes as Ray made his halting way into a solitary cell in the middle of Em City, that first day he'd been able to rise and walk again, in his scavenged jeans and soft flannel robbed from the dead, and a weight on his chest from the inside out.  
   
_The only thing that could kill Miguel Alvarez was Miguel Alvarez,_ Alonzo had said before turning back to his empty cell to cough delicately – comparatively, anyway – into a blood-stained handkerchief.  
   
The rest of Em City – the remains of Em City – was moved out to Unit B in the consolidation later that same day, but they'd left Alonzo behind. It was closer to the morgue when the time inevitably came, anyway.  
   
Ray remembers Armstrong's eyes as he cradled a pistol in his hands the night before he walked away, stroking its length over and over with a thumb, and he remembers D'Arbo crouched in dirty, blood-spattered scrubs beside another prison cot – and another and another – finally sliding to the floor, rocking with her face in her hands. He remembers Sean's blank look at the infirmary door as they all realized there was no higher up, not anymore, that no one was going to call with some directive, no one was coming to save them - that it was up to them, like some committee, some jury with the power of life and death, and not one of them was going to walk away free, even those of them who managed to walk out.  
   
Through it, Ray thinks now, but never over it.  
   
_There's less of them than there used to be, but they were all locked up for a reason, Ray. You want to turn Robson loose on whoever's still out there, trying to make it? How about Leonoff?_  
   
_So what do you want to **do** with them, Sean?_  
   
Ray has to wonder how many of the uniforms even care anymore, how many of them just walked away, whether Oz is the last lonely outpost of the prison system, alpha and omega at the end of the world, and he knows what keeps Sean here. He shivers, winds his sweatshirt tighter around himself like a shroud as he steps into the unit command station and scrapes out a smile for Howell, sitting hunched at the control panel, head in one hand and the other arm curled around her midsection.  
   
Esperanza, Ray had suggested, a nod to the baby's father – whoever he was – and that's what Ray's been calling her in his head, although he knows Howell would never name her kid in Spanish, no matter who the father was, and who the hell would name a kid "Hope" in all of this, anyway?  
   
He has to wonder if Howell's even told anyone else, yet.  
   
She's been the most vehement about keeping the remaining prisoners locked up, and Ray thinks that for her, maybe, Oz has become more fortress and sanctuary than prison, thick walls and bullets to hide behind with her unborn child while the world falls to shit around them. This is the only security, the only stability she's got left, and she's holding on to it, tooth and nail. She's certainly not going to jeopardize it, any of it, by letting out any of the guys who are left, letting them roam free.  
   
_Animals in a zoo,_ she calls them, and Ray wonders what's happening to all the animals in all the zoos right now, dependent on human masters who are never coming back, and decides not to think about it. It's not as if the same thing isn't happening to pampered household pets – at least, not once they're finished with the corpses locked inside houses and apartments with them, finer furnished than the cells in Oz, but charnel houses just the same. He remembers the crypts under the Santa Maria della Concezione in Rome, skeletons still in dark habits and skulls decorating the walls and the Capuchin prayers at night among the ancient dead, lit only by small lamps in golden pools of light.  
   
_They weren't sentenced to **death** , Sean._  
   
_Neither were all of those people out there who are dead, now._  
   
"Take a break," Ray tells Howell, gentling his tone as she looks over at him. "Go get something hot to eat before we're scorching things over a fire."  
   
She tilts her head and narrows her eyes, and he can see her pulling the words apart and running them around, but he just holds his smile at her, allows his eyes to drop to her still-flat stomach before looking up to meet her gaze again.  
   
"Go on," he urges, lowers his chin to look up at her disarmingly. "I'll ... babysit these guys for a little while."  
   
Ray waits for three minutes after she's gone, counting down in his head, making sure she isn't coming back, always anticipating another flicker of the lights, wondering if it will be the last, and then he opens cell 6A first. He watches as Rawls darts out, poised for flight, and waits for Arif to step out to face him, to walk halfway down the block, standing in front of the wide stretch of Plexiglass, seeming curiously naked with uncovered head, a grey prison shirt still crisp over a ragged T-shirt. Ray remembers working their way through Unit C, only days ago, side by side, both of them ashen skin stretched tight over bone, still coughing against the lingering taste of blood and the ache like drowning, risen from prison cots to walk again, to minister to the dying. 

Like Thucydides in Athens, he thinks, randomly, and he can still feel his own hands slick sticky, although he'd long since exhausted his supply of holy oil, and he can still see Arif's glance sliding toward the cellblock entrance, toward Armstrong's tight-knuckled grip on a rifle, can still see the calculation. He's afraid of what Arif's going to find if he ever does make it back to his kids, now, but Ray remembers his mother's face in slow, golden sunlight and the tight grip of his nephew's hand wrapped around two of his fingers as Koji took his first steps. He remembers his brothers at the rectory, a sanctuary of grace over meals and late night theological debates around the kitchen table ... but no, Tim Kirk already took that away in fire and blood, burnt meat and gasoline like a pale prophecy of what was to come.  
   
"Go," Ray says, hitting the button for the intercom, voice crackling through the speaker and into the unit. "The delivery entrance behind the kitchen is open. For now."  
   
They stare at each other for a moment, in an expectant silence like a held breath, and then Arif nods his head and turns away, and the remaining 19 cells erupt, finally, in pleas and curses and a rattling thunder of pounding on the bars.  
   
_I am the first and the last and the living one,_ Ray thinks and almost laughs at his own temerity, except he knows the laughter will leave him doubled over and gasping for breath again. _I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hell._  
   
He looks down and starts flipping switches, all the way down the row.  
   
Luis Vergera, he catalogues, and Vergera slips out before the cell door even finishes opening, pausing to cross himself in front of Ray before taking off after Arif.  
   
Gabriel Vincente, and don't think about Miguel, he tells himself, don't think about Alonzo.  
   
Alvin Yood and Mikey Oliveri.  
   
Jamal Yusef, and don't think about Nascim, don't.  
   
Moses Miller and Al Whitworth, and don't think about Keneniah or Burr, don't think about Poet.  
   
Henry Stanton, and don't think about Gloria, don't think about Pete, don't, don't.  
   
Don't think about Vic and Sal and Tim ...  
   
There's three cells left when he hears the door of the command station slam open, and he didn't expect her to be back so soon.  
   
"What in the fucking _fuck_?" Howell's voice says behind him.  
   
When he looks around, she's standing in the doorway, mouth hanging open in disbelief.  
   
"Get away from those controls," she tells him.  
   
"No," he says, a gasp of fresh air in the midst of drowning, and he turns away, looks back down at the panel, throws two more of the switches – Dante Bosco, Clint Davis, Pablo Rosa, and don't think about Stella, don't think about Bob or Agamemnon, don't, don't ...

For a split second, he thinks it's the clanging slam of one of the metal cell doors and he's looking up to see what's going on when the bullet hits him like a punch, jolting like a blow to already bruised lungs, spinning him back to face her, knocking him sideways to stagger against the control panel. He hits hard enough that he thinks – in whatever detached part of his mind has been observing this whole time – there'll be a bruise on his hip, hot messy blood pooling sticky under his skin. It should hurt more than it does, and he meets Rosa's wide eyes through the Plexiglass, husks out " _Go,_ " at the kid before reaching out to flip the last switch, open the last cell door – Don Zanghi, Liam Meaney, and don't think about Ryan's indolent slouch gone still, Tobias' sharp drawn features accented by his life's blood slicked crimson on his lips.  
   
Ray takes absent note of the blood on his own hand, dark and sticky, fingers sliding over plastic, and then he finally loses his balance, slips down and sits hard on the concrete floor, banging his head against the edge of the control panel.  
   
He looks up dazed at Claire and the gun, the handgun she's been carrying since all of this started, like all the rest of them on this side of the bars, and he sees her finger still on the trigger, lights flickering around her like St. Elmo's fire, and he sees Rawls behind her with a forgotten pool cue in his hands, blurred around the edges.  
   
" _Don't,_ " Ray rasps, raising one hand weighted like stone, like drowning, the words sludgy in his mouth like blood, and he's not even sure which of them he's talking to.  
   
A look of puzzlement flashes across Claire's face for an instant before Rawls hits her, a two-handed swing like a baseball bat, and Ray thinks he was aiming for the back of her head, but they're none of them on their game, skinny and hungry and exhausted and strung tight, _tight_ , and he ends up whacking her across the back, high over her shoulders. She stumbles forward, gun clattering to the floor as she tries to catch herself on one of the chairs, hand skidding across its back as she half-turns to see Rawls raising the pool cue again.  
   
He hits her across the face this time, snapping back her head, and she collapses to the floor, as dazed as Ray, but he can see her teeth set, her lips drawn back, through the spatter of blood. The lights flicker again as she scrabbles toward him like a crab, and he can see her reach for the gun before Rawls brings the stick down again, hard, glancing off the back of her shoulder, and then she curls in on herself, both of them eerily silent except for harsh breaths and grunts of effort that sound the same, and Ray realizes with sick horror as Rawls raises the pool cue again that she's trying to protect her stomach.  
   
"Stop it, Reggie, stop it, _goddammit, **stop**._ "  
   
It's Ray's own voice, yelling, gasping as he struggles to push himself up, his arm collapsing under him so he goes down hard on one side, half under the control panel now, his shoulder bowing under his own weight, and he can't stamp down the rising panic as the band around his chest, around his back pulls tighter, choking off his air.  
   
" _Reggie._ "  
   
Rawls freezes, chest heaving, finally looks up, and then he steps over Howell's outstretched hand to come stand in front of Ray, still clutching the pool cue, knuckles stretched tight in a death grip around it. Ray sees two of Howell's fingers twitch but otherwise she's still.  
   
"Reggie," Ray manages once more, raggedly, both of them rasping for breath, and they're staring at each other when the next shot comes, when Rawls staggers a few steps and falls to his hands and knees. He looks down at his chest, at the dark carmine blossom of blood in the center of his dirty T-shirt, dropping the pool cue finally to dabble his fingers in the slick sticky stuff before he looks back up, meeting Ray's eyes again with an almost comic betrayal, and then Sean's stepping forward carefully, over Howell's motionless form. He keeps his semiauto trained on Rawls, and Ray can see Heim behind him, gunsight and attention focused on the now-empty cellblock at Sean's back before his lingering cough has him bent over and hacking.  
   
Ray tries to speak, tries to move, holds up a hand and tries to put himself between the yawning dark muzzle of the gun and the other bodies, but _there's_ the pain he'd expected, screaming through his shoulder in a sick metallic punch like iron scraping on bone, and he bites back a yell between his teeth as he pitches forward.  
   
He wakes to Sean's face - drawn, lips tight - and oh, this is familiar, he remembers this, and this is the second time now – the second time Sean's almost lost him.  
   
They're in Leo's office, he realizes - still Leo's office, never really Querns' office, not to Ray, not yet, and he supposes it'll always be Leo's office now, even though Leo was dead before this started. Ray's sprawled on the ragged leather couch, sweatshirt and scavenged shirts gone - ruined, he supposes, but what the hell, there's all the rest of the staff locker room to raid, right? The skin of his chest feels pulled tight on the right side, and he tries to look down at himself, thinking that Sean - or whoever bandaged him up - hasn't cleaned up the blood very well. Sunset light pours crimson through the windows, the only illumination other than a pool of gold from the lamp on Leo's desk - they must have turned off the other lights to conserve the generators.  
   
He looks over at the whiteboard - "3:30" the numbers say, now, and he thinks vaguely of Vespers and wonders how long it's been since the figure was updated.  
   
"Through-and-through," Sean says, crouching beside him, and Ray rolls his head on the bundled blanket serving as his makeshift pillow to meet his gaze. Sean's bare forearm is a line of heat against Ray's skin as the other man leans over him - slung across his stomach, curving over his hip, caging him in - and Ray shivers, tells himself it's the chill lingering at the edges of the office, but that's not it, not entirely. "You're lucky. You lost more blood than you could really afford, but a little higher, and we'd have been picking a whole mess of shattered bone out of your shoulder. You probably won't be able to use the arm for a while, but if we keep it clean ..." He trails off, although neither of them really acknowledge how much more of an "if" that is than it used to be. "Anyway, you should be fine, if you don't pull anymore _stupid_ shit. Rick packed it while you were still out."  
   
Of course he did, the survivalist SORT team motherfucker. When they leave here, Heim's going to have the biggest chance of surviving, Ray's not stupid enough to think otherwise.  
   
"Rawls is dead," Sean says, and Ray nods, because he expected that from the minute he saw Rawls go down like a puppet with its strings cut, from the second he saw Sean standing behind him with a repurposed SORT Beretta. He can imagine what Sean must have thought, coming through that command center door, seeing both Ray and Howell sprawled bloody on the floor and Rawls still clutching the pool cue in a death grip.  
   
"Howell?" he asks.  
   
"We don't know anything for sure, yet," Sean says, sitting back, no longer leaning over Ray, although he continues to hold his gaze. "We probably oughta' hook her up to some of those machines in the infirmary, but ..." He breaks off, spreads his hands. "None of us know how, with D'Arbo gone. Not that it's going to make much difference soon, anyway."  
   
The light on Leo's desk flickers in punctuation, the entire prison taking a hitch of breath before settling back into its groove. Sean stands, wandering over to poke at their supply of bottled water on Leo's bookshelves.  
   
"You got shot in the shoulder, Ray."  
   
"Yes," Ray says - croaks really, through his dry throat.  
   
"Rawls didn't have a gun."  
   
"No."  
   
"Claire had a gun."  
   
"Yes."  
   
"Claire was the one who shot you."  
   
"Yes."  
   
"Why'd she shoot you?" Sean's back, standing over him with a cup of water that Ray can _smell_ , he's so thirsty.  
   
"I think you know why," he says with a rasp, looking up to meet Sean's eyes, because he's not going to lie about this, he's got no reason to lie about this, and the light flickers, like a blink, like a hitch in reality, punctuating his words.  
   
_Animals in a zoo,_ Howell had said, and "13:30" Sean wrote in careful numbers on the whiteboard, like the clock ticking down in the death chamber, and they all knew what was going to happen when the generators finally ran down to silence, when the power was gone and the prison shut itself down with one last desperate gasp - final and inexorable lockdown, cell doors closed forever, and none of them would walk free from that, even those of them on this side of the bars, those of them who would manage to walk out.  
   
It's not like you could just get out a big key these days, skeleton key or otherwise. That's not how the automated system works.  
   
_We can't just leave them to get trapped in there and starve_ , he'd insisted, leaning forward after everyone else had gone, Howell and Heim and Velasquez, his palms pressed flat to the top of Leo's desk so he wouldn't fist his hands and pound ineffectually at the surface, and _We've got enough bullets to make sure it doesn't get to that point,_ he remembers Sean saying.  
   
He rubs a palm over the scratchy prison-issue blanket thrown over his legs like he can banish the slick sticky slide of blood on his hands, and he remembers the look in Sean's eyes, remembers the way Sean suddenly wouldn't meet his eyes. They all knew this wasn't going to get better, no one was going to come, no one was going to call. It was up to them, power of life and death, light flickering around them, and Ray wasn't about to let Sean be put in that position, where they argued and debated and waited too long, too late, where he had to make the choice 39 times and pull the trigger each time.  
   
Sean scrubs his free hand through his messy hair, rubs it over his face and blows out a breath. Ray gives him a minute, but he knows Sean has a lot of practice at getting over what he must consider dumbass behavior, and Ray is _really_ thirsty, so he finally reaches for the water, making a pained sound as his shoulder stretches.  
   
" _Shit._ "  
   
"Language," Sean says, with a disturbingly maternal tutting sound, like a disapproving grandmother.  
   
"Sean," Ray responds evenly. "Give me that cup."  
   
"And manners," Sean says, and he sets the cup down on the floor, but it's only to perch himself on the edge of the couch and help Ray into a more upright position before he picks up the water again and holds it out for Ray to close awkward fingers around with his left hand.

"You don't need a sippy cup for this, right?" he asks, and Ray doesn't need to move his right arm to flip him off.  
   
"This ... is going to be a pain," he says, finally, wiggling the fingers on his right hand, and he lets the cup fall in his lap, left hand still curled loose around it. He's so _tired_ , bone-deep, like a bruise, like drowning. He supposes he'll dig around in the pillaged infirmary tomorrow, when there's enough light, and see if he can find a sling.  
   
"Come here," Sean says, shifting on the ragged couch, tucking himself into the corner, and he helps Ray through a series of incremental movements punctuated by protesting nerves and screaming muscles, torn flesh and hissed breath until Ray can lean against him, back to chest, Sean's hands on him, and oh, he remembers this, through fever and the smothering weight on his lungs and the copper crimson salt taste of blood on his tongue. 

He remembers burning alone and abandoned in the dark behind his own eyes, the frantic flutter of his heart and the panic as his chest and back pulled tighter and he curled in on himself and gasped for air - alone but then not, a cool hand on his forehead and arms holding him up when he thought he'd suffocate, chest heavy and filled with blood, pooled sticky under his skin, drowning from the inside out. He remembers surfacing, finally, waking tired and hurting and thirsty, so thirsty, throat raw like acid and mouth tasting like rancid meat - remembers waking up, finally, and seeing Sean, watching him for long minutes, asleep in a corner of Ray's office in white wintry light, grey prison-issue blanket wrapped around him, gaunt and haggard and head tilted back against the wall in a way that had to be murder on his neck.  
   
"You're a dumbass," Sean tells him now, and Ray can feel the words rumble against his back, can feel them breathed out against the nape of his neck as much as he can hear them, and he shivers at the faint brush of Sean's lips forming words against the bare curve of his shoulder. "If it came down to it, we could have got Velasquez to cut them out with some welding equipment."  
   
This is the second time Sean's almost lost him, and Ray thinks about that, turns it over in his mind, studies it - Sean almost lost him. He remembers looking up to meet Sean's eyes, blood on his hands at one more deathbed, remembers the horrified look when he doubled over, coughing, in the conference room, fighting for breath, flecks of copper on his lips and tongue, and he knows.  
   
Sean can't lose another one.  
   
Ray's not used to being this close to another body, doesn't have a lot of practice at it, but the utter exhaustion keeps him still, weighs him down like a stone, like drowning, helpless in its grip, heat from Sean's body seeping into his own, unknotting tight muscles in the cocoon of blanket Sean pulls over them in the bloody light falling cross-hatched through the mesh window screens. He can feel Sean's chest rise and fall against his back, can feel their breaths syncing, like Sean's body is encouraging his own to breath, like Sean's heart is encouraging his own to beat, maybe, and his lungs hitch and stutter as he tries to pull in a deeper breath, still weighted from the inside out, and Sean's hand tenses on Ray's chest, over his heart, so Ray turns his head, breathes in the scent of him, blood and sweat and skin.  
   
I'll give you this one, he thinks. I'll let you save one.  
   
He wakes with a start, out of dreams of Rawls, tight-knuckled grip and look of betrayal, Howell's blood-spattered snarl and the curve of her body curled in on itself - _Esperanza_ \- fire and blood and the keys to a bottomless pit, smoke rising in the air and the taste of gasoline and ashes in the back of his throat. He bites back a groan because Mother of God, he _hurts_. He thinks one eye might be half-swollen shut where he bashed his face into the guard station control panel, and he can't quite tamp down the panic as he fights for breath, even though he's through it, even though he made it out the other side.  
   
He's shifted - or been shifted - in his sleep, finds himself tucked against Sean's side, wedged against the back of the couch, silvery twilight filtering through the office except for the golden pool of light on Leo's desk. Sean moves under him, starts to pull back from their huddle, tangled in the blanket, but it's like a reflex, a kick to the surface when you're drowning, as Ray gets his fingers in Sean's scavenged flannel shirt, tugs him back, pulls him in despite screaming muscles and the sick ache in his shoulder. Sean finally gives in and crowds against him, and Ray tucks his nose into Sean's neck and breathes, concentrates on the in and the out, like Sean's body is encouraging his own, swipes a thumb absently back and forth over the bit of collarbone that's exposed in Sean's open collar near Ray's cheek. He shivers under the light tracery of Sean's touch under the blanket, trailing along the edge of the bandage around his shoulder before smoothing like slow sunshine along his bare side to cup warm around his sore ribs.  
   
"Exit wound was in the front, Ray."  
   
"Yeah?" Ray says, into Sean's chest, lassitude seeping through him again. He thinks he could sleep for days.  
   
"She shot you in the back."  
   
"Well, to be fair, I did turn my back on her."  
   
"It sounded like Rawls was killing you, the way you were yelling at him down there," Sean says in the dim grey light, like some kind of confession, and Sean had to make a choice, didn't he, while Ray was lying there bleeding?  
   
Ray wonders, sudden and sharp, like a slap, like a revelation, if Sean even knows there had been a choice for him to make. Sean can't lose another one, and Ray remembers that feeling, knows what it's like, remembers Torquemada, blood spatters on an embroidered handkerchief like some kind of Victorian consumptive. _The only thing that could kill Miguel Alvarez was Miguel Alvarez._  
   
" _He who conquers shall not be hurt by the second death_ ," Ray quotes, and he's right, the laughter does sound hysterical when it escapes, and it hurts, deep, like a bruise. Fucking _John_ , he thinks, revelation and _apokalypsos_ , and all that bullshit was supposed to be metaphorical, some kind of Biblical-era acid trip.  
   
"Ray, _dammit._ " Sean's hands tighten on him until he subsides.  
   
"Don't worry," he says, patting Sean's chest, flattening a palm against the warm body under him like he can feel the beat of Sean's heart, and he remembers golden sunlight through open windows, the sounds of the city and graceful, curving brush strokes on ancient paper in a New World. "I'm tougher than that."

"I fucking hope so," Sean says. "Because I gotta tell you, Ray - you're going to kill me if you keep pulling stuff like this."

"I promise," Ray says, and he shivers, hisses as Sean's fingers press against the bruise on his hip, sliding under the waistband of jeans robbed from the dead. He leans into the touch as Sean thumbs his hipbone over the low-hanging denim.

It's been years since Ray was this close to another person, years since he pressed against another body in anything other than blood and sweat and fear, and he touches Sean's face in the dim light, sketching over his features like he's learning a new art form or a half-forgotten language, smoothing the furrow between Sean's brows with a thumb, tracing the curve of his jaw with the pads of two fingers. 

Through it, but never over it, he thinks, and Sean's lips part under his fingertips.  
   
Do his other promises still bind him, he wonders absently - his promises to the Church? God's holy kingdom on earth, they told him, and he believed, but Ray's seen rivers of blood now, seen fire in the sky, and there's nothing holy going on out there. He promised celibacy, promised never to marry, in lifelong service, but what does that mean, now? He realized not long after he rose from his pallet to walk again that obedience meant nothing when there was no higher up, not anymore. No one was going to show up, no one was going to call. He's on his own, blood on his hands. Maybe he's the only Catholic in the hierarchy left on earth, last lonely outpost, alpha and omega at the end of the world.  
   
Maybe he's the goddamn pope by default, and speaking _ex cathedra_ , what does he want now?  
   
Think hard, before you make that infallible decision, he tells himself.  
   
Ray's not sure he's still Father Mukada, thinks maybe Father Mukada bled out on the floor of the guard room in Unit B, or maybe it was earlier, maybe he hacked out his life with the blood in his lungs during four days burning with fever in his office, and he feels feverish again, now, a storm in his flesh like the infection, only this is cauterizing, burning out something small and hopeless and helpless in him. He raises his head to meet Sean's eyes as Sean lifts a hand to push back a strand of hair that's fallen over Ray's forehead, tilts his face into the well of Sean's palm as he cups Ray's jaw, runs a rough thumb over his lips.

I'll let you have this one, Ray thinks.

The only way out is through, and he doesn't want to stay here, locked behind bars and bullets, in a fortress full of ghosts - not just the ghosts of the dead, but the ghosts of their past lives, the ghosts of his past life, the ghosts of his vocation, his vows, haunting the corners of his office in wintry white light and pools of shadow in silent, unused cells. This prison is finally dying around them, last gasps of its death throes, final inexorable lockdown, and he knows what kept Sean here, but Ray's opened the cell doors and he hopes it's in time - wishes he could pray it's in time - and maybe Ray's finally free to leave it behind, maybe Sean's finally free to leave it behind, even if they don't know what they're walking toward.  
   
Ray's run the numbers in his head, 94 percent infection rate and an even higher mortality rate, and no telling how many deaths by misadventure, choking out on dirty water or lost to gunfire. But even worst-case-scenario, there can't be fewer than 15,000 left alive in the region, out there, somewhere.  
   
Right?  
   
The light flickers out, and Ray holds on tight in the dark.


End file.
